That moss-covered bucket I hail as a treasure; For often at noon, when returned from the field, I found it the source of an exquisite pleasure, The purest and sweetest that nature can yield. How ardent I seized it, with hands that were glowing, And quick to the white-pebbled bottom it fell[12-6]; Then soon with the emblem of truth[12-7] overflowing, And dripping with coolness it rose from the well-- The old oaken bucket, the iron-bound bucket, The moss-covered bucket arose from the well.
How sweet from the green mossy brim to receive it, As poised on the curb,[12-8] it inclined to my lips! Not a full blushing goblet[13-9] could tempt me to leave it, Though filled with the nectar[13-10] that Jupiter sips. And now, far removed from the loved situation,[13-11] The tear of regret will oftentimes swell, As fancy returns to my father's plantation, And sighs for the bucket which hangs in the well-- The old oaken bucket, the iron-bound bucket, The moss-covered bucket which hangs in the well.
If we compare _The Old Oaken Bucket_ with _The Daffodils_ (page 1), we will see that the lines of the former are longer, and when we read aloud a few lines from the one and compare the other, we see that the movement is very different. In _The Old Oaken Bucket_ the accents are farther apart, and the result is to make the movement long and smooth, like that of a swing with long ropes.
Let us examine more closely the lines of _The Old Oaken Bucket_ in a manner similar to that suggested on page 2, for _The Daffodils_. If we place the accent on the proper syllables in the first four lines, they will read as follows:
How dear´| to my heart´| are the scenes´| of my child´|hood, When fond´| rec-ol-lec´|tion pre-sents´| them to view'; The or´|chard, the mead´|ow, the deep´| tan-gled wild´|-wood, And ev´|'ry loved spot´| that my in´|fan-cy knew.´
The vertical lines above are drawn at the ends of the feet. How many feet are there in the first line; how many in the second; how many in the third; how many in the fourth? How many syllables in the first foot in the first line? How many other feet do you find containing the same number of syllables? How many syllables are there in the second foot in the first line? How many other feet are there containing the same number of syllables? Examine the feet that contain three syllables. On which syllable is the accent placed when there are three syllables in the foot? A poetic foot of three syllables which bears the accent on the third syllable is called an _anapestic_ foot. The meter of this poem, then is _anapestic tetrameter_, varied by an added syllable in most of the odd-numbered lines and by an iambic foot at the beginning of each line.